Silent Movie
by SpreadTheWord
Summary: Somewhere between life and death, sane and lost he's caught, trapped just beyond the bounds of reality. There is no treatment, only a cure. If only that cure didn't involve a coffin. [An angst Chasecentric fic centering on life, love and religion]
1. Prologue

**A/N: Whoa, not a drabble!**

**I know it's short, but this is just a prologue so the rest'll be longer.**

**Disclaimer: Don't sue me. I don't have anything worth suing for. **

**X O X O X**

Watching a car crash is entertaining.

Vehicles collide, metal mangles, people are thrown and torn. It's ugly, it's gory and it's absolutely impossible to stop watching.

When you're in a car crash, the equation changes. All you can see is the destruction about to take place and all you know is the pain about the take hold.

The solution to this new equation is different too. Instead of the witness, you play the victim.

And being the victim in a car crash sucks.

Robert Chase wasn't doing anything wrong. He was driving to work. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't distracted. He was just driving to work.

He blinked, and in that split second, he went from by standard to being completely consumed by light and a sort of unspeakable pain.

He blinked, and suddenly he was a marked man.

He blinked.

There were a few dozen people standing on the street, on the sidewalk, all caught up in their own lives, none aware of what exactly was going, but in that moment every head turned, every voice silenced and, just for one sweet, opaque moment, every heart stopped.

Robert Chase's heart stopped.

Only difference is, everyone else's started back up again.

Ah yes, a car crash is ever-so entertaining.

What comes next is even better.


	2. Purgatory

**A/N: Before this fic goes any further, I'd like to point out that this was inspired by Fluffy2001's (amazing) fic, After Life at PPTH, which was pretty much the first House fic I ever read here on FFN, and I've been stuck on this idea ever since. Contributing to the specifics of this rather dream-like limbo is such great poets as Jim Morrison, T.S. Elliot, Dr. Seuss and even a bit of Shakespeare. I draw inspiration from a vast number of sources, including the great, JennifferButterfly who's Satan in Trials of Transgressions (another great read) inspired certain characteristics in creepy-suit kid. (You'll meet him later.)**

**Just thought I should hand out credit where credit is due before going any further. **

**Shout-outs to those who reviewed such as the amazing Espavo, Sandy Murray and stealthy290. This chapter is dedicated you y'all.**

**Disclaimer: I'm not David Shore. This is not mine. Don't sue.**

**X O X O X**

He felt empty.

His eyes should've been swollen shut, his mouth twisted, skin shredded, slick pieces of metal seared through his body, yet he was uninjured. Rain, sweat, blood-soaked clothing clung to his shaking body like a child clings to a dream, but otherwise he was unhurt, his skin smooth, his body strong.

Yet inside he felt hollow.

There was no light wherever he was, only a sort of darkness that swallowed him, consumed him, became him.

"You're not dead," a grimy voice called, its Brooklyn accent lingering long after its words faded, "Not for long anyways."

Chase sat up, feeling fragile as light in the heavy dark.

"Pardon?" he asked quietly, his whisper echoing hollowly through the rather threatening silence.

"You heard me. Don't try playin' the dumb blonde. It don't work on you."

His pale blue-green eyes flickered, adjusting slightly to his strange surroundings. The speaker wasn't standing too far from him; short and slim, leaning against something he couldn't see. What the hell was going on here?

"Where am I?"

"Limbo, purgatory, whatever you want to call it."

"Purgatory?"

"Otherside if you're a Chili Peppers fan. I must admit, I always thought Geisel summed it up best."

"Geisel?"

"Theodore Geisel," the voice called contentedly, "Dr. Seuss, you _narisch_. Wasn't you ever a kid? The Waiting Place, Blondie, it's called the Waiting Place."

"And what exactly do you do here, apart from waiting?"

Chase watched as an undefined line of shiny white teeth widened with slight glee. "You pray you don't never gotta stop waiting."

Chase began to stand, his legs wobbling beneath him, unwilling to lift his fragile body.

"Wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why? I can't pray standing?"

"You haven't prayed in ten years."

Chase felt a cold shiver slip its way down his spine, vaguely wondering if there was any part of himself that was at all stable. His mind certainly wasn't.

"And how do _you_ know my religious habits?"

"Let's just say I'm very observant." A small orange flame ignited, flickering for a moment before setting as a small, glowing circle at the butt of his cigarette. "Want one?" the voice cooed lightly, offering the contents of a faded red and white box of Marlboros to him.

"I don't smoke."

"What? You think they're gonna kill you?" A mirthless laugh rang out hollowly through the empty silence. "No, death ain't nothing you got to worry 'bout no more." A pause. "I'd get back on the floor if I was you."

"You're not me."

"Yep. It's not my ass that gonna get bruised when you hit the floor either."

Chase shifted his weight uncomfortably, but before he made up his mind on whether or not the floor was such a good place to be he was on his back, screaming in agony. There was something on his chest, in his chest. He couldn't breathe, only scream.

"Come on _narisch,_ you're not the first kid to get the V-Fib."

A faint voice was screaming from somewhere far away, his words muttled. For a moment, there was nothing, a faded commotion nearly forgotten, and then it came again, the throbbing pain exploding from within his chest once again.

"C'mon kid, stay with me. What's the V-Fib stand for?"

"Ventric...Ventricular fibrillation."

"Good kid, now what's it used for? What have you got?"

"As...as...asysto-" Chase was cut off by another scream exploding through his throat.

"_If we fibrillate again we could do permanent damage to his heart."_

"_If we don't he's dead."_

"_But the damage-"_

"_CLEAR!"_

Suddenly Chase wasn't laying in the darkness of a place that seemed purely lore, but under the cold glare of trauma room lights.

Suddenly this crazy dream was real and reality hurt like hell, every inch of his skin burning, every breath an impossible prayer for life.

Suddenly the sky was falling, collapsing in on him, razing him from the inside out.

Suddenly death didn't seem so bad.

"Is OR Three ready yet?"

"Strauss needs two more minutes. They're swamped down there."

"We're swamped up here. Somebody bitch to Cuddy and get this guy into surgery."

_They don't know. They need to know, they need to know who I am. Check my wallet. Somebody, please check my wallet._

"Aw shit, we got a doctor."

_Thank you God, thank you._

"Tell Cuddy got we've got one of our own. That'll buy us an OR."

"He's going under again."

_No please, I want to stay awake. I want to live._

"Knock him out."

And he was falling.

**X O X O X**

"I told you to get down, but no, _narisch_, you're invincible. You had to fall."

The pain was gone, every inch of his body hollowed where pure-hell had once filled. This numbness felt strange under his skin, his nervous heartbeat nonexistent.

His eyes were closed, terrified of what he might find if he opened them. More darkness? The opaque light seeping through his pale eyelashes begged the differ. No, it was what illumination might reveal that had him afraid to breathe.

Deep breath.

No more falling.

Eyes open.

Then it hits him.

He is not alone.

No, quite the contrary.

He was surrounded by people, all types of people, souls lost within themselves, and a slick-looking kid no older than nine in full-out 1920's gangster garb complete with a worn blue-black fedora tipped over one eye.

"What Blondie, you thought you was alone?"

"How dead am I exactly," Chase began slowly, "and how dead are they?"

"Who knows? Who cares? Hey baby!" He grabbed a passing blonde by the skirt, pulling her close before dangling a gold hotel key in the few inches between their faces. "My room's 356. Be there at eight." The Barbie replica merely blinked for a moment or two and then slowly, to Chase's great surprise, took then key and shook the boy's grip off with as little grace as necessary.

"Need someone to read you a bedtime story?" Chase asked a bit too loudly, not bothering to hide the astonishment that riddled his voice with question.

The boy stood in silence for a moment before forcing out a loud, rather rude laugh that seemed to echo a few too many times. "Wow, did ya think of that all by yourself? It's so creative, ya know? The perfect thank-you."

Chase stood, no longer shaking. "Thanks for what?"

"Nothing," the boy smirked, "Thanks for nothing." He nodded to his left. "Follow the crowd. It'll take you to wherever you need to go. If you need me, ask for me."

_Need you for what?_

"But what's your name?"

"If ya knew that ya wouldn't be here," he called cheerfully, latching his arm around a brunette in a rather racy red lace dress.

**X O X O X**

The crowd didn't really go in any particular direction, so there wasn't really any particular direction to follow. Chase wandered, milling amongst the misplaced people all around him, vaguely wondering why he was the only bloody one and what the hell was going on back on Earth.

_What the hell's going on here?_

For someone who had once devoted his life to the worship and prayer of all that could not be proven, he was finding this hard as hell to believe.

It felt like a dream.

One hell of a dream.

Finally, he picked one lost soul to follow (a blonde with a nice ass, in honor of fedora-boy) and came out to where all lost soul's journeys eventually lead; a high-ceiling, low-price hotel lobby that rang with cheap laughter from liquor and stank of infidelity.

So this was where life led.

_This isn't half-bad,_ an optimistic whisper seemed to sing within his mind, _for a half-dead whorehouse, this isn't bad at all._

"Now, now Robbie, you shouldn't doubt the land of the dead. It's far lovelier than Earth once you get to know."

Chase spun around, unsure of where the voice had come from. His eyes traced to a grand staircase, then slowly up it.

"You really shouldn't be surprised to see me," the speaker cooed happily, placing one slender hand on her satin-covered hip, another toying softly with an old-style cigarette. "I mean, you did know that I died."

Chase swallowed, unable to speak. He had never seen her like this. He had never seen...

"What? Not going to say hello to your own mother?"

**X O X O X**

**Okay, here're some explanations of some of the pop culture-references used in this chapter:**

'**Otherside' is a track on the 1999 Red Hot Chili Peppers album _Californication._**

'**The Waiting Place' is referenced in the Dr. Seuss book Oh the Places You'll Go**

**_Narisch _is Yiddish for stupid. Lots of Jews in Brooklyn, where creepy-suit-kid's accent used to live.**

**Asystole is the medical term for when your heart stops.**

**Okay, I promise to update soon. This is pretty fun to write, probably because reality is fun to ignore.**

**EDIT: LASSIE CAME HOME. Chapter three will be up soon, an explination of technical difficulties that took this fic down will be in it, so ya, sorry about that.**

**So...**

Comments?


	3. Faceless

**A/N: Look everybody! I'm not dead! And neither is this fic. Oh, the wonders of reincarnation.**

**I was having some technical difficulties (and by some I mean a Vietnam of computer errors) and I just kinda decided that this fic wasn't worth the trouble and to screw it and be done, but then I got a few where'd-it-go?! messages and my dad finally fessed up and paid someone other than himself to fix it and the planets realigned and this fic is officially back on. :D**

**Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine.**

**X O X O X**

Amelia Chase was as lovely as ever, poised waves of raven hair framing her lovely features, poised smile and blue-green eyes mirrored so elegantly in her son.

"Lord, you came out lovely! You look so much like him when he was young, a carbon-copy, darling; everything but the hair. Now who'd you get that from?"

_The milkman?_

Chase couldn't speak. He hadn't seen his mother in ten years and he'd never seen her like this, so young, so pretty, so alive. Why did it take death for her to finally live?

Amelia lifted one painted porcelain hand to her child's face, slowly coiling a loose stand of gold hair around one elegant finger. A slow smile flickered upon her lips, a slow inward smile so often emulated by her progeny. Her hand traced down his left cheek to a small, barely-visible scar just under his eye.

"Where'd you get that?" Her whisper was so much more powerful than any scream to escape her lips.

Finally his throat cleared, his stomach unclenched just enough, just enough to speak.

"From you."

Amelia drew her hand back quickly like a child with its hand on a stovetop.

"I am sorry about that, darling. I really am," she drew a slow earnest breath, "sorry."

"I know."

She intertwined her right arm with his left while checking a watch that wasn't there on her free wrist.

"Oh dear, I am terribly late for the ball. I never could manage time very well." She snuck a quick glance at her son's reveal-nothing expression. "I go to AA meetings now, you know."

"You never went to meetings."

"I suppose not."

Chase swallowed, a new pit at the bottom of his stomach. "You're still-"

"-a desperate, old drunk? No dear, I'm just an alcoholic." A pause. "Of course, I don't drink anymore."

"Then how-"

"I am what I was, darling, nothing more, and nothing less." She smiled a wonderful, warm-you-from-the-inside-out smile and began to walk, her hooked arm bringing Chase along for the ride.

"Your father's around here somewhere. I've no clue where, but then again, I never do." Her hand fluttered outward, indicating to nowhere and everywhere all in one sweet motion. She shot him an all-knowing sideways look. "I've looked in on you from time to time, darling. You've done well."

"Has he?"

She shook her head sadly. "I wouldn't know. There's this theater where you can watch your life, past or present, and since I don't really have a present, I've watched you some, but not everyone can do that." She took a slow, elegant breath. "It hurts, Robbie. Sometimes it hurts like hell."

"More than life?"

"It's different, darling. It's a whole other life. I'd probably drink this away too if I could find the gin. Vices don't disappear. Thank God your soul doesn't either."

"Ya," Chase muttered, looking straight ahead into endless sea of people ahead, "Thank God."

"You met him yet?"

"Who, God?"

"Yes, darling, you'll have to meet him sometime. You're probably not dead enough yet." She smiled again, looking out ahead. "Oh look, there's Daniel!"

"Daniel?" Chase asked slowly.

"Daniel!" Amelia called, waving a tall red-haired man over. "Robert, this is Daniel!"

The man smiled, stooping slightly. Chase doubted he was less than seven feet.

"How do you do?" He asked quietly, bowing deeply, a faint hint of an unidentifiable accent tingeing his words. "New boyfriend, Mel?"

"Lord no, he's my son!" Amelia beamed. "Doesn't he bear a striking resemblance?"

"To his father maybe."

"Lord, Daniel, you're an ass." Her voice was sweet, light, offering her other arm to the man. A crooked smile filled his lips as he took it, the soft satin of her gloves brushing his faded black suit jacket, just a little too short in sleeves.

"Daniel died in a Nazi air raid in World War II. Isn't that a divine way to go?"

Chase glanced at his shoes (shoe...where'd the other one go?) with a new-found interest. He had no idea how he was supposed to react.

_Oh yes, it's simply marvelous. I died a good, bloody death too, you know._

Suddenly a new question filled his mind.

Was he dead?

It was like a dream, a deejay vu of long-lost memories. He was walking blindly, an empty eggshell, hollow and fragile, breakable to the last. The usual hurricane of emotion raging through his mind was silent, still.

This peace was strange without fear, without the doubt of actuality.

Why did this feel so real while nothing in this dream could ever come true?

"Oh look darling, there's Holly!" Amelia exclaimed cheerfully, turning to Daniel, "let's catch her before she runs off to that dreadfully boring husband of hers again."

She carefully unhooked a long, thin arm from her son, smiling politely, beginning to walk away called, "I'll see you soon, my dear."

"When?"

"Soon," she called eyes radiant in the brightly lit room, "we only have forever and that's not very long at all, is it?"

Chase nodded slowly, not entirely sure what he was agreeing with, turning away from them.

"Oh, and Robbie dear!"

"Ya?"

"Be careful in the masquerade! Everyone is as they seem."

_Everyone is as they seem?_

What kind of reason was that to be careful?

And who the hell was ever as they seemed?

Chase looked around slowly, unsure of what he was seeing.

Everyone around him had masks; perfect porcelain replicas of the owner's face, every fault and feature mirrored in a ribbon-lined façade, unpainted and pale, so fragile in their awkward fingers.

Tawdry costume jewelry hung heavily around the necks of ladies both trashy and fine, a few daring ones weaving pale plastic gems into their hair.

Laughter rung out like bells, coating the room with a sort of light air that usually had Chase gagging. It was a sort of starlit paradise of some forgotten socialite, a savoir of dying wishes drowning in silk and satin and pink campaign.

He thought he escaped this life.

He wished he had a mask to hide behind, some mateegra beads to hang himself with.

Where would suicide land you in the afterlife?

Would, could the ax fall, the floor drop, the house burn?

Sacreligious didn't even begin to describe.

Suddenly Chase didn't feel like being around these people, around any people. He pushed his way through the crowds of souls nowhere near as lost as he. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong anywhere.

His shoes were ugly.

His shirt was stained.

His socks didn't match.

It was people like him that should be colonized, social lepers diseased with themselves.

Where were his pills?

What was the treatrment for self-loathing?

He needed to get out. He needed out.

A door, an out lay ahead.

He needed to get out.

_Everyone is as they seem._

Was he?

The door was cool beneath his soft palms, the smooth polish light as air.

Push the boundries.

Break on through to the other side.

It was a hallway, long and narrow lined with mirrors at all anlges, framesless and faintly smudged. A rusty, slightly crooked door barely hanging on its hinges at the other end forty feet down illiminated by a flickering, faded EXIT sign; its dusty, red-orange radiance reflected down to the glass floor benath his feet, the scene lacking nothing but innocence.

He needed to get the hell out of this place, back to Earth or life or wherever he wasn't.

Ne needed out.

His footsteps didn't echo. His heartbeat didn't sound. His breath lay caught in his throat, just behind clenched teeth.

He was getting out.

His eyes stayed glued to the floor, tracing his steps between his half-polished shoe and dirty sock with the hole in the heel. Slowly his head lifted, still unsure if they wanted to see his own reflection.

Something was wrong. His reflection was off.

He stopped walking to look himself over.

Nothing seemed too flawed.

He turned to walk again and...

No, wait. It was impossible.

Did his reflection just wink?

He was seeing things. He must be seeing things.

"I'm not crazy," he said a bit too loudly, his voice echoing slightly. His reflection's lips didn't move.

_Maybe I am crazy._

He started to walk, tracing the mirrored walls with his fingertips.

He was going to get out of here if it killed him.

Maybe it already did.

He was shaking, his hand barely steadied beneath the tarnished, false brass doorknob when he felt a foreign hand close around his wrist, a bitter-tasting rag slide past his teeth, burning in his mouth, bile rising through his throat to meet the gag.

This was no way to fall.


	4. Comatose

**A/N: I haven't been very good with posting this fic regularly, have I? My apologies. I had a few issues with betas (one of which got it confiscated by the Housemaster...skills, Katie. Skills.)**

**I'll try to do better. I really like writing this and have been messing with the plot a bit. Okay, new chapter. I hope you enjoy.**

**x X x X x X x X x X x**

When Chase was fifteen, he had gotten into a fight.

It was just outside the hospital where his father worked, the hypocritical fumes its employees seemed to breathe with every word choking him with each breath he dared to take.

He had been sick, the kind of sick hospitals couldn't, wouldn't fix.

He had been sick of hiding and lying and smiling this goddamn fake smile. That act, that pantomime was killing him.

He was sick of pretending.

He was arguing with his father over some long-forgotten matter, something unimportant they only fought over to have a reason to scream.

He had been angry for too long to remain trapped in that deluded silence of thought, his stiff upper lip softening, the curtain screening his everything-is-alright matinee collapsing down on its one-man cast.

He had shoved it in his father's face, the fact that he was an adulterous bastard, whatever girlfriend he had that week suddenly out of the shadows of all things unacknowledged where all his father's vices kept a comfortable home.

He lost it.

He swung.

He hit his father, clear across the face.

What's worse came next.

Rowan Chase swung back.

It's funny how that stupid fight was all he could think about now, how the floor felt strangely familiar beneath his back, how the bitter after-taste was the same. Back then, he used to wake up with dried blood in his mouth from the wound on his swollen lip re-opening. Now he couldn't get that strange poison out from between his teeth.

Who wanted to attack him here, now?

His mind reeled, stomach churned. The faint light burned his newborn eyes as his lids fluttered open.

Weird didn't even begin to describe.

He glanced down at himself, at the sweat that glazed his skin, the dirt coating the bottom of his socks, the ballpoint pen messages scrawled across his dirty palm in his own handwriting.

_Don't go through the door yet._

Yet?

So much for getting out.

He stood his legs surprisingly awkward beneath him.

Why shouldn't he go through the damn door?

Yet, huh?

When then, if not now?

Where did it lead, not just behind the door but this whole stupid dance between life and death? Would he still be stuck here if he, his body, didn't make it down there on Earth?

And what if he did survive?

How broken would he be?

The tears in his shirt claimed devastation, something sharp and flat having been driven its way straight through his body, his back. Would he be crippled or worse? How banged up did his head get in the crash? Dare he consider brain damage?

Here he was functional. He could walk, talk, breathe on his own.

But what if he didn't want to be painless?

Chase stared at the doorknob.

He had never been brave. What did he have to loose now, apart from everything? Everything wasn't worth much to him anymore.

The handle felt cool and grainy beneath his fingers, danger in stride under his command.

_Don't go through the door yet._

Screw it.

Screw it all.

Turn the doorknob, a final rebellion against all things proper and pedantic only the find it locked.

Of course it was.

Even dead his luck was shit.

Suddenly he hated himself, hated his hypocrisy and weakness and every inch of him that felt relieved for not having to risk it.

Turn around, walk away. It was so like him.

The ballroom had long-since emptied; pallid streamers of pale gold and white lay scattered across the scuffed black floor among forsaken gems and shattered masks, the ghost of the near-forgotten gala still dwindling in the midst of dying candlelight.

The echo of his footsteps across the soulless hall was a sullen sort of comfort, a soft and forbidding reminder of home.

It was too damn quiet, too safe. He didn't want to be a sheep, one in a million followers destined to follow blindly.

"You hear that?" He called to no one in particular. "You hear me? I'm done being blind. I'm done not seeing! I'm bloody done-"

His breath caught in his throat, burning his lungs from the inside out. His legs couldn't hold him; his eyes couldn't see.

"_House, stop messing with the morphine. He was just in a car crash that could leave him-"_

"_Brain-dead, leg-dead or just the boring kind where he just stops moving and Cuddy makes me wear a suit? Cool it Cameron, we need to check for brain damage before his it's too late to fix."_

"_That morphine's not just keeping him sedated, House. Without it he'll be in-"_

"_-complete and absolute pain?"_

It felt like an explosion, a bomb igniting beneath his ribs, every inch of him praying for insensitivity.

"House, you can't just-"

"-cut his morphine? Oops."

A scream exploded from Chase's lips, agonized to the last.

"At least we know his vocal chords work."

"House!"

Cameron's voice rang with horror.

Bandages help his broken body together, the soft sheets of a common PPTH post-OP room laying heavy on his torn skin shattered bones.

"Hey there Wombat, we need to make sure you didn't bang up that that pretty little head of yours too bad. What's your name?"

"House," he choked, fingers curling, crumpling the sheets beneath him, swollen eyelids sealing shut, distant tears burning raw skin across his face.

"Not mine, yours."

He tried to turn his head, tried to see his colleague.

_Cameron, oh God it was Cameron. Help, God, Cameron, somebody, help. Help..._

"House, stop it. He's barely stable. He can't think past the pain. Put him back under."

"We can't MRI. You think he'd prefer his own comfort over not being able to remember his childhood, med school? You think he doesn't care about the little things like how to walk and talk? You think he could_ survive _as something useless?"

It was amazing how they could ignore the screams of a dying man, so lovesick, so tortured everyone in the hallway had stopped to stare at the source. Cuddy had cut-off mid-sentence to attack the door only to find it locked.

Oh, the irony.

Chase gasped, his inarticulously fumbling over his mottled words.

"What's he saying?" House asked impatiently, glancing at the rattling door.

Cameron needn't have leaned in, putting her breath close to his.

His words were clear.

"Kill me."

"Chase-"

"Kill me," he whispered, gritted teeth filling with blood.

Cameron looked up in dismay. "House, put him under." House didn't move. Her voice turned sharp. "Find another way to get your answers. Knock him out."

Chase felt the cold reality slip away, a warm sort of darkness hollowing him.

What a familiar friend this emptiness had become.

**x X x X x X x X x X x**

"Oh, you don't suppose-"

"-Simply can't be-"

"Why, I never-"

Voices swirled around him, vacantly drifting through and throughout his mind, beneath his bare skin, easily visible in the cheap light of appraising eyes. He was on the floor again, suddenly aware of every inch of skin exposed, every inch of skin he had.

"-Natural blonde-"

Chase's eyes snapped open. He really didn't want people looking at any hair of his that wasn't on his head.

Was dignity such a distant dream?

His eyes skimmed the scuffed black lacquer floor and above, looking around at the somewhat faceless crowd. Most still bore masks, some broken; missing noses or cracked from forehead to poised lips. All stood staring in the now dimly lit room, the strange and familiar comfort of judgment softening the shame of this foreign infamy now working its way through his body.

He dropped his gaze back to their shoes before squeezing his eyes closed, praying they'd all just go away, his lips pursed as he forced a moan back down his throat.

"Ya all standin' 'ere waitin' for him to do a trick? He don't look like a dog to me. Go play dead with all the otha' _gufs_."

Chase flinched silently. He knew that voice.

"Eh, _coopies,_ you all stupid? Scram."

There was no pause, no hesitation. Brooklyn-Boy said scram and they scrambled. Shuffled feet and hushed voices were suddenly amplified and muffled all at the same time, an orchestra of blithe preparing to play, each pause peppered with the sound of cloth hitting the ground, offerings of attire left to one without.

"Hey kid, roll ova' or somethin'. You don't look so good all twisted like that."

Chase felt a warm cotton jacket drop over him, its seems stretched and worn from wear, its angles odd and tired.

Slowly he sat, careful to keep himself covered. His head was spinning, muscles aching. He wanted desperately to go to sleep, to disappear in his own shadow and let his body heal where his mind could not.

He wanted to turn off, let this mess subside for a few hours where all this wasted time stood at a stand-still.

He just wanted peace.

Instead he opened his eyes.

"Got a name yet?"

Chase's voice was quiet, his words sharp.

The kid smiled a crooked smile, his too-white teeth bright in the dimly lit room.

"You needsta work on ya thank-you's. Didn't nobody ever teach ya no manners?"

"A triple negative; impressive," he said loudly, his tone edged with a harsh sort of humor. The boy's smile only grew further.

"Well, ain't you a little ray of sunshine! What eatin' you?"

The boy rolled is eyes in a way he should have been years away from mastering, ignoring the lock of dusty copper hair that had fallen into his line of vision. He hastily looked Chase over, the elegant bones wrapped in pale skin, soft features hardened with the uneasy air of someone who knew both feast and famine and the instability in-between.

What kind of life had this man lived?

As if he didn't already know.

_He can't be over thirty,_ he thought vaguely, _but he looks seventeen._

"Nothing," Chase shrugged, staring at the floor, "Sorry."

_Probably feels seventy._

"Bull," the kid called flatly.

Chase merely shrugged, leaning back on his elbow to reach a pair of yellow pinstripe pants that looked to be about his size.

"So how dead am I exactly?"

"In a coma."

"That why I'm...you know?"

"In ya all-together?" Chase nodded. "Pretty much."

"Groovy," Chase muttered through the gritted teeth of a forced smile.

The kid smiled again, looking, for the first time, like he believed some good might come out of any of this.

"C'mon," he called his voice quiet, "Let's go see the movie."

What a dangerous thing hope is.

**x X x X x X x X x X x**

'**Ello luvs.**

**Just a little bit of clarification; i****n the realms of Yiddish _guf _means corpse, while _coopie_ is slang for 'little piece of shit' (and apparently my family's nickname for me through kindergarten. I am LOVED.)**

**Hey everybody, point out any typos to me. I stepped on my glasses and broke them so there might be some mistakes. Sorry. I have Microsoft Word blown up to about to about two-hundred percent but I still probably messed up in typing corrections. That and the fact that I'm not so sure about this chapter makes me kind of desperate for comments.**


	5. Silent Movie

**A/N: Ack, I have no free time. I just finished my research paper on the impressionist movement for French and started tutoring again so my afternoons are pretty much filled with explaining proverbs and adverbs and why plagiarism is BAD. Seriously, I've got a third grader who thinks no one will notice if she rips off T.S. Elliot and a fifth-grader who scares the crap out of me. (She knows where to hide the bodies. o.O )**

**Sorry for the ramble, I'm just kind of swamped.**

**X O X O X**

"So this is my life?"

"The highlights really, just the importan' stuffs ya really needsta see."

"Need for what?"

"Shh, Blondie. Ya'll see."

Chase shifted awkwardly in his standard sort-of comfortable Middle America movie-theater seat, wishing he had some fake-tasting popcorn to get the taste of bile out his mouth.

"Sorry," he muttered, more to himself than the child beside him, "I've already seen this one."

The nine-year-old Tony Camonte beside him snorted loudly. "And you think I ain't? Shut up and enjoy the show, _narisch."_

Chase sighed inwardly, shifted again and looked back up to the too-young teenager that he once was pushing open the front door of him Melbourne home only to find among the spilt gin and broken glass the sudden understanding that of all the times his father hadn't come home, this was the last.

"How come there's no sound?" Chase asked softly, barely daring to breathe.

"Do ya really need sound?"

No, he didn't.

He didn't need to be reminded of his mother's drunken sobs echoing throughout the hallway, how every subaudible resonance had seemed deafening, how silent his breath seemed among the noise of the world, his invisibility undefined and indefinite.

He remembered it all perfectly.

"Can we skip this part?" Chase asked in a sort of forced lightness, his fingers taking a vacant interest in the hot-pink hair ribbon currently taking vocation as his belt. "You can watch the present too, right?"

The child shrugged lightly before reaching behind him and pulling out a dull rectangular remote.

"Where'd you get that?" Chase asked in slight surprise.

"God's back pocket," the kids deadpanned, smirking darkly, hitting a square black button.

The screen was instantly filled with an odd-angled shot of Chase's body, unconscious in a hospital bed, an unrecognizable rag doll; torn, broken and bruised. Wilson sat beside him, filling out drug trial application while Foreman sat across from him, dozing in a stiff blue armchair.

"Do I get one?" Chase asked nonchalantly, nodded toward the remote.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Hot damn, ya hard to please. And I thought blondes was supposed to be easy."

"You're under eighteen. Stop trying to get in my pants."

"'Cause who wouldn't want to hit that?"

"Nurses," Chase laughed, "and nuns."

"Eh, watch it. I like nuns."

"I bet."

Chase listened for a moment as the soft laughter of a child filled the air, not completely innocent but blithe all the same.

"So does this mean-"

Chase cut off, suddenly aware that the child beside him had vanished.

There was a soft clicking noise and the screen filled again with a new image, this one of an eighteen-year-old Robert standing, staring beside a priest at his mother's casket, the first and last time he ever wore that ill-fitting suit that hurt his shoulders every time he shrugged when asked if he really was alright.

He hadn't been.

He wasn't now.

"I don't need to see this," Chase called loudly to the empty theater, "I remember it just fine."

Another click.

Another scene.

He was fifteen, on the ground in shock and pain, staring up at his father, the cool gray hospital behind him a somber companion to the strange, damp earth beneath him, his sight slightly blurred by the blood dripping into his pale eyelashes.

"This isn't funny," he called again, standing arduously.

White noise blared for a moment before the chapter changed again.

This time at a vaguely familiar apartment, a strange girl pressing him to the wall, kissing him, kissing back.

_My God, it's Cameron._

Chase stood frozen, staring up at her, fragile and lovely.

This wasn't how he remembered her. In his mind she had been so strong and wild, twisted steel against glass, but now she seemed to very breakable, a porcelain doll rocking at the edge of the table, mechanic and stiff and so very ready for shattering.

Had he shattered her?

Chase sat back down limply, watching in ignominy as their clothing hit the floor, their bodies pressed together and they both gasped for air, the silence of the film louder than any scream that had escaped their lips that night.

"Funny ain't it?"

Chase jumped at the sound of the child's voice.

"Where'd you come from?"

Brooklyn Boy ignored him, leaning forward into the row before him, next to Chase, looking up at the screen.

"She's pretty," the kid stated simply. "She ain't the best I eva' seen, but pretty all the same."

"What are you trying to prove?" Chase asked sharply, "that she was the one, my greatest mistake? You think I wanted-"

"_I_ ain't sayin' nothin'," he cooed with false timidity.

"You're obviously trying to make a point. What is it? That she'll never forgive me for dying?"

"She seems pretty forgivin'. What's got ya so worried?"

Chase glanced back up at the screen, to Cameron cradled in his arms, shaking like a broken child.

"I don't know anymore," he laughed, voice unstable, "not that I ever really did."

The boy's smile shifting to that of a proud father.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the epitome of humanity."

Chase shook his head, annoyance working its way through his body.

"So where _did_ you go?"

"Heaven," the kid stated coolly, "there was a small disagreement between Gabriel and Michael."

Chase stared at him incredulously. "Angels?"

"Eh, Mikey's an archangel."

"Oh ya, right, my mistake."

"Don't go all sarcastic. It's true. Ya get it wrong infronta 'im and he gets all may-the-Lord-rebuke-you on ya sorry ass. Gabe forgot. He's good guy, but a little flighty."

"Unbelievable," Chase breathed.

The kid shrugged cheerfully.

"Ya thought ya was alone in this sad excuse for a universe? Naw, the only way anythin' could be this screwed up and still spin is if there was a greater bein' around 'ere to spill coffee on the blueprints then scotch tape it togetha' when it don't work so well."

"Don't you mean up there?" Chase nodded, indicating past the ceiling.

The kid snorted lightly. "It's borin' up there. Too much cream cheese."

Chase smiled again, suddenly aware of why children laughed four times more than adults. The world was a hell of a lot funnier when there was world of hell you were entirely unaware of.

"So what's all this...this Waiting Place? A second Earth?"

"More like Eden," the kid said, beaming like a child showing off the macaroni picture frame he made for grandma, "less perfect, more real."

"So where's Adam?"

"Tryin' to get his rib back from Eve."

Chase laughed.

"Sounds like Earth."

No response came. Chase tore his eyes from the now-blank screen to find the child had, yet again, vanished.

Chase stood, waiting for more unsettling memories to fill the empty theater but none came. It remained silent, empty, somehow much more threatening.

He shuffled out to the hallway, uncertain of exactly which way he'd come.

There was a small crowd circled around something at one end, obscuring his view.

Slowly he turned and walked towards them, a wasp to their social flame. It wasn't until he got close that he could hear the sorry, drunken sobs.

The bile that had been burning his throat for so long rose again.

**X O X O X**

Somewhere in the suburbs of Princeton, two doctors sat on the hood of a slightly abused red convertible watching the sun's daily suicide settle into the horizon before them.

"You're not eating," House noted flatly, taking another cheerful bite of his tuna taco.

Cameron stared at her nails, trying to remember the last time she painted them.

"You're not going to fall for him, are you?"

"Who?"

House examined her face carefully. "Chase," he said slowly, "he damaged enough for you now?"

Cameron gave House a small, forced smile. "You don't care about him at all, do you?"

House took another bite, giving himself an extra few seconds to answer.

"I care," he resolved softly, "enough to make sure he got a room with a Cuddy escape exit so we could do illegal tests on him without getting caught."

Cameron laughed to herself, soft and sick.

"Like I said," she whispered, "you don't care at all."

**X O X O X**

**Random pop-culture reference explanations, as requested by my beta:**

**Tony Camonte was the name of the original Scarface in the 1932 film Scarface, Shame of the Nation.**

**The cream-cheese-in-heaven snark was a reference to the Philadelphia cream cheese commercials, which I've seen way too many of. **

**I don't like writing dialogue. It's really not my thing, and pretty much the hardest part of writing for me and this chapter had a lot of it. I cannot put into words how much I would appreciate comments.**


	6. God Limps

**A/N: The creepy fifth grader I tutor got suspended for getting in a fist fight with a boy who called her a slut. It's adorable really – a petite, innocent looking blonde girl beating the crap out of a guy a foot taller than her. I heart America's youth.**

**Just a note, there is an actual conversation with God in this chapter. Tell me if you find it offensive. I didn't try to be.**

**X O X O X**

When Chase was eighteen he ran away.

It was after the funeral, the worst day of his life in that stupid suit that didn't fit right when false sympathy hung in the air like stars on strings in the cardboard universe that grew smaller by the day. Years of alienating the people around him, pushing away those who dared to care had finally left him alone.

It wasn't really running away. Running away inferred you had someone to run from.

And Robert Chase had no one to run from but himself.

He had just wanted it all to go away, to get away.

Away from that house.

Away from the church on the edge of the valley.

Away from the lies laced with shadows, unacknowledged doubts fringed with self pity, all edges blurred by the whiskey labeled as communion wine.

It was the second time in his life he had ever been drunk, the second to last time he ever would, and somehow in that moment it felt okay to be a complete failure. It made him feel human, alive.

At least he was breathing.

Chase was always a bit of an addict, the kind that kept memories for ammo and waited for forty-five minutes when the operator asked him to hold; the kind that stood in elevators for an extra moment just to hear the mundane music; the kind that could stand in a crowd and never feel more alone; a social-acceptance junkie to the last.

Chase followed the sound of broken sobs, harsh and gasping in the thin air, hollowed thoroughly by intoxication, wading his way through the dwindling starlets and sons of great men without a legacy of their own.

"-shocking behavior."

"-a common drunk-"

"No decency-"

"_Vices don't disappear. Thank God your should doesn't either."_

Ya. Sure. Addictions transpiring into the afterlife, waking from a nightmare to walk into another; it was a lot to be thankful for.

He surfaced from the mass of choked chiffon and chivalry expecting the worst.

What he found was nothing.

Almost.

In the center of the gathering was an old-style phonograph, a warped black record revolving in tight, even spirals beneath an arm lacking a stylus.

Chase glanced around him again. No one really seemed bothered by the fact that there was no actual topic of gossip. No one noticed.

_What are these people on?_

He pushed forward, annoyed, and lifted the arm of the record player. The sobbing immediately stopped.

The sheep didn't.

"-outrageous."

"-just came out of nowhere-"

Chase shook his head heavily, disbelief working its way through his body. "Just so you know, you're all insane."

"-just crazy."

"-out of his mind-"

"Poor boy's lost his wits!"

They weren't even looking at him, past him, to something, someplace he was blind to; unwilling to seek.

_You're all insane._

But then again, what made him so different from them?

The hallway before him was winding, full of people and delusions of sanity. Satin-skinned men as dark as the night stood in white Klan robes listening to the silent speech of a naked mannequin, unmoving and unmoved, a faint hum of _Strange Fruit_ a few octaves too low working its way through the surrounding congregate. Bloodied and bruised queens of an era not ready for acceptance sat under the care of faceless doctors with smoke-filled syringes, trying facilely to tune out the dozen or so children of a Nazi Youth group, unaware smiles poised beneath payess and worn yamikas.

Screwed up didn't even begin to describe.

Why was this all so familiar?

Did history really repeat? Were we, as a society still so all-knowing that we refuse to learn, so naïve as to hope for a better tomorrow without change? How dare we dream of another day while horror envelops the one we're living in now?

How could God let this happen, let him doubt? It had been so long since he had been raw enough to stand waiting for some transparent messiah to come and solve all his problems, but Jesus, did life really have go like this?

He had come so close to faith while never feeling a thing.

He pushed away human contact, distanced himself from everyone he knew and all he had yet to meet, cornered himself, desperate for a sign. None came. He stayed and prayed and waited, going through the motions of living until the hate living flourished like a desert rose in the cold, dark place within him. He hated the priests, the nuns, the parishioners, anyone whose eyes followed him with only lust or judgment. He hated his mother for being weak, his father for being weaker, himself for crying, God for abandoning. He hated everyone on this lousy planet whose lives went on while he crashed and burned.

He was so damn sick of sitting in his own wreckage, a silent monument to those who didn't matter.

He was utterly nonessential, useless beyond the point of pain.

It was all he'd ever been, all he's ever be.

He would die, if not now then later; be mentioned by some from time to time, memorialized by none until eventually, the name Robert Chase fell from their lips completely.

There was no way to change fate, alter the inevitable.

He'd lost track of how many times he'd had to learn that lesson.

Chase paused to watch a faction of limbless Cold War vets reminisce about a better time, a better life, a pretty girl.

"They're not as nice as they seem," a slow, even voice muttered from behind him. "They've got no manners."

Chase didn't have to turn to see who was speaking.

"Neither have I," he reasoned softly, focusing in on one quadruple amputee unable to brush the fly from his forehead.

"My fault probably."

_Probably._

There was no question in Rowan Chase's voice, just a sort of mindless reputation that came along with claiming fault without feeling.

Chase turned around and looked his father over.

He was younger here, smoky hair slicked back, charcoal eyes seeing any and everything. He really did look like Robert; his stance and built a mirrored in his son, still the unsure child he had left so many years ago, just another mistake out of the millions he'd made.

"Ya," Chase whispered, voice accusing and distant, "Probably."

"What are you doing here so soon?" Rowan asked, a faint coldness etching through his cordial tone. Patience was not his strong-point.

Chase forced a challenging smile, a perfect mixture of smug self-assurance and pointed dare.

"Oh believe me," he started lightly, his tone spiking behind gritted teeth, "It wasn't my first choice in ways to start a day, but hey, could be worse." For what seemed like the first time Rowan Chase had nothing to say.

Chase could feel his blood getting hot under his skin. For a moment he considers returning the silence, but instead said, "You know who it must really suck for? The ones who _didn't_ get smashed up in a car crash. It must be so _unexpected_ to lose someone _just like that _with _no warning_." He paused. "Not that you would know."

Rowan's gaze turned sharp as a razor.

"You're being disrespectful."

_No shit._

In the distant back the Klan members had changed their tune to some old Dylan song. Chase stood for a moment, trying to remember which.

"No," he said finally, "all I'm doing is saying what we're both thinking."

Rowan shifted uncomfortably. He preferred his vices anywhere but the spotlight.

"I'm sorry," he muttered insincerely, "I should have told you about the cancer, but it really didn't seem fair. I hadn't been there so much, well, you know."

Only a Pawn in Their Game.

That's it, the name of the stupid song.

_Only a pawn._

Was he?

"No," he said, defiance etching his voice, "I don't."

"Robert-"

"Dad, do me a favor," he cut in sharply, "stop talking."

His ears were buzzing and it was getting sort of hard to breathe. He didn't want to talk to this guy.

He wasn't aware of himself walking away, just Rowan calling after him without following. Funny how his father wasn't any different here than he was at any other time Chase had ever known him.

He was the most familiar stranger he'd ever known.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Chase glanced up at the arching ceiling above him, wrought-gold laced like ivy over the glass, faint bars of light seeping through like rain on a child's palm.

It was funny really, the beauty that clung to fault.

A half-dozen or so gypsies of a century that had passes so many times before sat assembled, selling beads on twine and fortunes of the past from caravans of colored paper. Beside them was a pair of murky glass doors with scratched letting scrawled across in a rather eloquent script.

_Chapel._

What kind of people prayed on the other side? What was the point?

Chase peered through cloudy glass. The scene was light, faintly mottled. A soft murmur of prayers in tongues he did not know worked their way through the air, enticing hope for what seemed like the very first time. He pressed a palm to the smudged, letting the pulse of another life seep through his skin.

_Another life._

Never was a string of syllables so filled with want.

Chase pushed the door open, stepping through to the threshold to the soft welcome within.

He let his soft bare-feet guide him to a back pew, leaving foggy footprints of warmth behind with each step.

The cool wood was comfortable and worn, a forgotten fingerprint left behind by so many before him. He hadn't been in a church in a while. This was nice; almost homely.

Almost home.

"I know it's not much," a somehow familiar voice cooed in his ear, "but we do what we can."

Chase turned in surprise. It was the first breath he'd felt on his skin in God knows how long.

"What?" the woman asked lightly, "don't recognize me?"

He sat for a moment later until recognition surpassed his guard.

"Kayla," he whispered, shamed slightly by the moment of hesitation. She was the only patient he'd ever been careless enough to kill.

"No," she crowed lightly, "just her appearance."

"Then who-"

"Come on, Robert, do you need me to spell it out for you? It's only three letter. I'm sure you could manage just fine on your own."

His voice sounded squeaky in his throat. "God?"

"That's the one."

Kayla's body slid around the edge of the pew, taking a nonchalant seat next to him, coy smile fitting her tired face like a child's hand around its mother's fingers.

"Anything you want to ask me?"

Chase started to shake his head, but stopped himself.

"Shouldn't you already know the answer to that?"

"I'm not physic," she said softly, smiling lips twitching further up, "just the Almighty. I'm all-seeing, not all-knowing, ya know? It's a sweet deal being the creator. I get to make stuff, drop it and watch where it falls."

Screw self-containment. Chase was shaking his head again.

"That's it? You _make stuff?_ What about pain and death and disease and-"

"-addiction?" One eyebrow arched acridly. "Aren't we the pessimistic one? No questions about life or love?" Chase stared flatly, not daring to open his mouth. God sighed, shifted and repositioned herself to answer again. "I made the tree of knowledge. I made the temptation. Some fall to that. Some don't. I can't explain why people hurt. Hell, I can barely explain why the sky's blue." A pause. "I can't answer most of your questions. I've provided the means. Most people don't like what they find. Asking me in person doesn't change the truth."

Chase nodded, pressing his spine flat against the back of the pew in an attempt to straighten out a bit. He was so damn tired.

"Is there anything you'd like to hear from me directly?"

Chase felt his lips curling despite himself. "I'm pretty good actually."

"Well," God sighed, standing, "come back any time if you want to talk."

She was half out the door before Chase thought to ask, "Why Kayla?"

A soft hand stopped the exit's swing. "Pardon?" God asked faintly.

Chase paused for a moment, feeling strange about having to explain something to God. "You picked Kayla's form to see me. Why?"

That gorgeous full-out beam no one had seen since Kayla's death was suddenly all over her face. "Because it wasn't your fault."

She paused again, looking him over. "If you want to go back," she added lightly, "go."

"How?"

There was that smile again. "There's a sign, sweetie. You need it explained further?"

"A...what sign?"

But Kayla's thin body had already dissappeared around the corner, a faint air of question left hanging in its place.

_What sign?_

**X O X O X**

**Explanations of stuff for people who have a life:**

**The stylus is the needle on the arm of a record player. (No needle, no sound.)**

**The Klan is a reference to the Klu Klux Klan, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic organization cough cult cough cough that pretty much ran around the South for decades reeking havoc, destroying homes, lives and killing countless people for no good reason other than ignorant, brainwashed hate.**

'**Strange Fruit' was a Billie Holiday song about seeing a black man lynched.**

**Payess are those two curly locks of hair that (male) Orthodox Jews wear. Yamikas are the head-coverings used in prayer.**

'**Only a Pawn in Their Game' is a song by Bob Dylan off his 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin'.**

**jazz hands for useless information**

**Next chapter is very possibly the last, discluding the maybe-epilogue, which probably isn't even worth mentioning. Wow. It's almost over and I'm not in nursing home. Who knew?**

**Remember kids, a comment a day keeps the psychotherapists away. Waste two minutes and help me keep sane. Comment please.**


	7. Poll?

Hi everybody! I'm in the middle of a one-shot now, but when that's done I'm bringing this fic back from the dead! Well, I'm thinking about rewriting chunks of it and tweaking the sort-line a bit so it will flow better. So, all you fabulous readers out there I have been neglecting like the terrible person I am, please cast your vote for what happens next.

There are three options:

I write and post the ending and then start the rewrite.

Don't bother with the rewrite, because nobody would read it anyway, just tell me how this goddamn story ends.

I rewrite it, and post the nice new ending on this fic and the new fic at the same time, which would be in a little while because I'll need time to do the actual re-writing, but that way those of you who will be reading Silent Movie 2.0 (with a better title of course) won't be spoiled.

It's entirely up to you. Basically, I'm polling until about New Year's, when my one-shot is due for Chasefest.

Cheers,

Jessica

P.S. If you prefer reading on livejournal, my new home it at spreadthevvword. My name is withoutpaper, so feel free to friend me. I've just been reworking things over there in the spirit of the New Year and me fixing things are broken so everything's hectic and crazy and being friended on LJ makes me happy, so do it! I promise I'll friend back. :D


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